Call for WWII Researchers

Frantic Games are looking to bring onboard four more researchers (Commonwealth, US, German) for 1944 D-Day Operation Overlord, you can see the full details Here.

Sunday 27th February 1944

- About 60,000 Japanese are reported to be trapped in New Britain and New Ireland, in the South West Pacific.

Saturday 26th February 1944

- Bad weather ends ‘Big Week’, during which 26 German aircraft production related factories are hit putting German monthly production down by 20%.

Wednesday 23rd February 1944

- Total U.S. casualties so far are put at 19,499 killed, 45,545 wounded, 26,339 missing and 26,754 captured.
– General Lucas is sacked from the Anzio command and is replaced by Major General Truscott. German counter-attacks drives the Anzio beachhead back further.
– Merrill’s ‘Marauders’ (US 5307th Composite Unit) begins Stilwell’s Sino-American advance into northern Burma.

Marauders crossing a tributary of the Chidwin River

Tuesday 22nd February 1944

- Malinovsky completes the capture of the mining area around Krivoi Rog.
– Heavy Japanese losses as the U.S. Navy bombards the Marianas in the Pacific.

A Japanese bomber explodes as it crashes into the sea
during an attack on Task Group 58.2 off the Mariana Islands

Monday 21st February 1944

- The largest Luftwaffe raid on Britain for some time, with 90 planes being spotted over Southeast England during the ‘Little Blitz’. The RAF sends 648 bombers to Magdeburg, but loses 55 for just 4 Luftwaffe fighters.

Sunday 20th February 1944

- Big Week starts with the largest ever daylight raid of war by the USAAF on Germany as 970 bombers carry out attacks against Hamburg, Leipzig and Braunschweig. The RAF pound Stuttgart with 2,000-tons of bombs.
- The Admiralty announces an 11-day battle with U-boats in Straits of Gibraltar, during which three ships are sunk and several damaged.
- A ferry boat, carrying the remaining ‘Heavy Water’ production from Telemark in Norway, back to Germany for safety is sabotaged and sunk on Lake Tinnsjo.

Crashed plane Dixie Dumper (Tibenham, England) after Helmstedt, Germany mission

Saturday 19th February 1944

- The RAF saturates Leipzig, dropping 2,300 tons of bombs, but loses 78 of 823 bombers (561 Lancasters, 255 Halifaxes, 7 Mosquitos).
– Danish saboteurs attack the rail lines round Aarhus.
– A Japanese convoy is smashed by allied aircraft in the Bismarck Archipelago.

A Halifax bomber meets its end in flames on landing.

Friday 18th February 1944

- German forces of Army Group Centre repel repeated Red Army attacks in the area of Vitebsk.

Belarusian partisan in a forest dugout with his family

Wednesday 16th February 1944

- Eisenhower takes up his post as C-in-C Allied Expeditionary Forces in Britain.
- Japanese forces make their last counter-attack on New Britain.
- The Indian Brigade try to cross the Rapido River, with no success.
- The 28th Maory Battalion reach the railroad north-west of Mt. Trocchio, and covered by darkness occupy the building of the railroad station, advance over the Rapido, but eventually have to withdraw because of a German counterattacks.
- 11th SS Volunteer Panzergrenadier Division is ordered on the offensive as a part of Operation Sonnenwende, the operation to destroy a Soviet salient and to relieve the troops besieged in the town of Arnswalde.

A recruitment posted produced by the British Free Corps, one of the units which
reinforced the 11th SS Volunteer Panzergrenadier Division in early February.